Social networking platforms such as Facebook, Google+, FourSquare, LinkedIn, and Twitter have become deeply embedded into the social fabric of modern day life. These platforms are used for a variety of reasons, ranging from individuals sharing daily activities and photos to corporations using them as valuable marketing and customer communication channels, and news agencies using them as a broadcast platform. While creating a basic account on each of these platforms is relatively straightforward, the options with regard to privacy soon become quite complex. Moreover, the processes for selecting and implementing one's preferred privacy settings change frequently and often without notice. For example, Facebook routinely changes how a user can implement certain privacy settings by implementing such features as allowing for a “per-post” sharing option (e.g., one can limit the viewing of a post to an individual or group), the degrees of separation (e.g., friends of friends) that can access or comment on content, as well as others.
Another common feature is the sharing of data from and among these disparate networks. This is implemented primarily through the use of application programming interfaces, or APIs, that provide access to the networks' databases on a push (updates are “pushed” to other applications) and/or pull (an application may periodically query another application) basis. Tweets, for example, created in Twitter are “posted” on the user's Facebook page. Updates to one's LinkedIn employment profile may show up as a status update in Google+. A check-in at a local restaurant on FourSquare may be posted as a tweet and as a status update on Twitter and Facebook simultaneously. As the content is shared on one platform and proliferates through others, users can comment on the content by adding text, images or other additional commentary, resulting in a “string” of user-generated content all falling under an initial post.
Recently, sites such as Klout, HootSuite, and Sprout Social have begun aggregating data fees from individual social network platforms onto a single platform. This process provides a “global” view of content and its creators and illustrates both how content proliferates across the web and how an individual's profile can appear in many places, often without their knowledge or permission. Moreover, it allows multiple users who otherwise might not be connected to view and possibly comment on content submitted by others. This creates a challenge, however, because while the content itself may be shared among these disparate applications, the posters' privacy settings that govern its display is not. This can result in the unintended publication of a comment and/or attribution of the content that was otherwise meant remain limited in its distribution.
There is a need, therefore, for methods and supporting systems that can identify, query, incorporate and implement privacy settings from multiple disparate social network platforms even as the content created in each platform is shared and aggregated across the web. Using such techniques would allow users to remain confident that the distribution of their commentary or other content will at all times be governed by their selected privacy settings, regardless of where that content was displayed.